Advertising analysis

When it comes to something like an advertising analysis, it can be hard for me to decide what to talk about. On one hand, I want to talk about things such as the new ways of advertising online, but on the other, I want to discuss things such as the failed advertising campaign of Microsoft's Xbox One. Due to such an issue, I will briefly discuss each. Both of these can be important as a media member.

First I would like to discuss ads. They are annoying. As Americans, as humans we hate ads, but we need them. Ads help make sites free to use. The best way then to have advertisements would be with the correct placement and ad-vironment. You don't want to be showing off denture ads on Crunchyroll, a popular anime streaming website. Most websites understand the placement when it comes down to things such as demographic, however, get things wrong in ad placement. If I am scrolling through news articles, I do not want an ad starting to play at the top of the article interrupting my experience. That kind of ad usually makes me want to switch news sites. Likewise, any kind of pop-up ad that might clutter up my phone screen drives me away. As a website you don't want that because more often than not you are not selling content you are selling ads. Thankfully companies are getting better at the placement of ads and how ads appear. Outstream Video ads are one such solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUiivGevsaQ 

Outstream allows advertisers to place ads within the content of a page but also for the video to know when someone is or is not watching and thus when to keep playing. It is a smart ad made to better engage with those interested and not waste the time of those ads could regularly drive away.

Second I want to discuss Microsoft's Xbox brand and the issues they have had. The main issue is that their advertising has not been strong enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfS5Rp2Lr9I

The Xbox One was mismanaged and mismarketed since the beginning. The issues started with the announcements, then went to ads, and coverage. This is important to note as Xbox just released the Xbox One X, previously known as Project Scorpio. Quite frankly the One X should have stayed Project Scorpio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7lT2eQrNbA

The ads for the One X are OK, but they are not enough to reach past the $100 higher price point over their main competitor Sony's PlayStation and before long both might be outshined by Nintendo's Switch. Xbox has not made a good enough argument for its price point, and it has not offered enough exclusives for people to care to switch over.

You may wonder why this matters when it comes to video and video streaming. The answer to that is that consoles are heavily used to watch many streaming services. I myself watch Hulu and Netflix on my PlayStation 4 Pro.

What should Xbox do to fix this? Well, first they need to drop the price point of the One X to around $350 undercutting PlayStation. After that they need to advertise the hell out of the Xbox One X and why it is better than competitors. They should also offer some free games and Xbox Live time for switching. Finally, they need to get exclusives to help push the brand forward.